tetonrider

decrease in threshold power v altitude is pretty well-documented -- at least averages.

i'm adapted and will even notice a reduction in power going from 6,200' to 8,600' in the course of 30'.

don't bother. i guess if you want you could bump it up 10%, but it's one or two days and won't really matter.

bummer. haven't really been following very closely here. i live at the base of Teton Pass.

got tagged by a vehicle a few days ago and that has taken some energy.

hope you had fun; weather's been great.

UmneyDurak

Did local Tuesday training crit. I and team mate bumped down to B. Idea was to practice attack, counter attack, lead out in a more controlled setting. He went from the start I joined. Two others followed, but dropped off within 5-6 laps. Total 17. After hour something pedaling our legs off we made it to the finish. Last few laps couple of dropped A riders were seating on our wheel. That hurt, but was a good threshold work. Next week back to trying to survive As.

I was limping all evening, my seat bones were seriously bruised.

revchuck 

Damn. Heal quickly and well!

miyata man

Assuredly it will be nice having a solid addition to group rides out there. I couldn't help teasing a little.

I threw an @ your screen name when he mentioned the trip and figured you just PM'd him. Then promptly warned him about Summer traffic. Hope you are OK.

By tagged do you mean a towing mirror by any chance?

globecanvas

Oh no! What happened?

globecanvas

I usually don't put in any TSS from walks and hikes but the last 2 days I did about 4 hours of moderately strenuous hiking including a couple of hours of steep rock scrambling and my legs (esp. calves) are super sore and it seems like I should put something in but I have no idea what.

topflightpro

I've been wondering the same thing but about weight lifting.

Ttoc6

@tetonrider : It really was a great ride. I took the trail / old pass road all the way up. So no risk of cars! THe descent back on the highway was insane. A few moments of fear due to holding that much speed for so long. Definitely had fun though! Heal quick, and I'll pm next time I want to do anything up in Jackson. Really loved that town, great bike-friendliness.

Ttoc6

First day in the new apartment today. GOt up and at 'em. Still getting used to the altitude. 1 hour of just exploring.

On the plus side, there is a number of 20 / 30 miles loops that leave right from the building. All of these are flat. Need to find some places with climbing that I can ride to.

TheKillerPenguin

Am I remembering correctly that you moved to Ogden? The Foo thread died and I totally spaced out on everything that was going on in it.

hubcyclist

90mins for me today, 3x20 sweet spot, 105 TSS. starting to feel like I could potentially increase my targets a bit but sticking with this for another week before re-assessing.

revchuck 

Ogden Utah is close to Ogden Nash, right?

caloso

Left early. Already 79 at 6:30. 2 hours of tempo-ish on the FG. Been a long time since I've done that. Nice.

Ttoc6

Yeah, moved to an apartment complex just south of Ogden. Ride today went West from the highway. Pretty flat out there. something liek 300 feet of gain in 23 miles.

tetonrider

thanks. that reminds me that notifications go to an email address i no longer check. explains why i never saw it.

save for a couple spots, summer traffic is really a non-issue. there are lots of pathways here (esp in terms of miles of path per capita), and lots of roads where traffic is non-existent. our problem is that there aren't many roads and all of them are 2 lanes; those can get backed WAY up if there's an accident.

i don't drive much at all except to head to town for my kid's sports--time it wrong and one can be sitting in traffic for 30 minutes. biking it takes me 15, 20'. which reminds me that we should bike today...

no, no towing mirror; i know what you mean, though. some of those things stick out craaaaazy far. those vehicles are usually higher off the ground, though.

not a huge deal (fortunately). thought a vehicle saw me and was either wrong or he didn't care; the guy pulled out in front of me. i did contact the vehicle but it mainly pushed me off the road. i came >>>>>this<<<<< close to saving it, but hit a seam in the road slightly off-balance.

i showed up to school pick-up with hands bleeding profusely (awkward!). after cleaning up the hands weren't that bad, but a couple bruised or fractured ribs have been the bigger issue.

anytime we as cyclists have an encounter with a 5,000+ pound vehicle and don't die, well, that's a good outcome.


here's one perspective: don't bother.

(a) if it's a part of your normal routine, then your body adapts to it. if i walk my dog or ski or whatever -- daily -- then it's kind of background.

(b) if it's not part of a daily routine, then some of the soreness is just from using different muscles, and it's questionable about whether it applies to cycling, which is aerobic. the 'authorities' will tell you that TSS is not designed to be mixed from one activity to another. i know folks do all the time, but it kind of muddies things.

personally, if i'm doing largely aerobic activities (e.g., nordic skiing and cycling), i'll assign TSS, but if i do strength work i record that i did it (it can help future analysis and explain performance on a given day) and don't bother with TSS.

TSS for strength-based stuff starts to get into how something made you feel vs some objective measure. if you go down that route, do you then say you'll change TSS for today's ride because you stayed up late last night and didn't feel so hot today during the ride (even though power is normal)? do you change TSS if you do your workout at an elevation of 3,000' vs sea level? what if it is 95F instead of 70F?

it gets silly -- and the CTL stuff is imprecise anyway.

glad you had fun. truly sorry i missed the posts.

Old Pass Road is a labor of love of my neighbor. over the years he has spent countless hours fund-raising AND doing road work (including shoveling snow and plowing, in addition to directing repaving efforts). just 8-10 years ago there was a ton of broken pavement on it, but now as you saw it is pretty smooth.

i actually like riding UP the highway better (like 8-10% over 5.5 miles vs 10-12% over 3.5), and riding DOWN the highway is way more fun. the descent on OPR is just requires riding the brakes too much with the lines of sight while you can go 50+ on the highway...sitting up. it's mountain-pass riding, though, so gusts hitting you from both sides depending on where you are in the descent takes a little getting used to.

you also get more comfortable after riding UP it, so you can see that the pavement on the way down is clear.

the highway doesn't have much shoulder, but traffic is pretty minimal most times of the day.

nice. that area is cool because you can ride flat terrain or easily go up into the mountains. it can be useful to vary the weather/temperature.

antelope island is a pretty cool feature (though you have to watch out for the brine flies in the heat of summer); you feel a world away from the city. check out the loop around the lake near Eden....then head up the back way up to Snowbasin. That road was damaged and is closed to traffic, so you have it all to yourself.

Ygduf

I knew you'd come around to "consistency in a powermeter is more important than accuracy" eventually.

tetonrider

You're cute!

And you managed to work in a consistent-but-inaccurate statement, too.

aaronmcd

Last night I did my usual Wednesday ride as of late. 50 miles, 205 TSS - the Mt Tam race ride (hit some good power numbers but still not a climber lol) plus the social ride around SF. Met some cool ppl at both rides, talked up racing a bit at the social ride. It was a blast! Resting up a couple days for a raceless weekend - what should I plan? Im thinkin a quick 50 or 60 miles on Saturday to save time to hang out with my wife <3 and then just beat the crap out of myself on Sunday.

globecanvas

I really don't know what the right thing to do is with respect to TSS for hikes and whatnot. I do some hiking and rock scrambling with the family most weekends, maybe 1-2 hours/week and it's usually not very strenuous and not really aerobic at all and I never put in any TSS for it. Over the past few days though we've done about 6 hours of mostly rock scrambling, still not really aerobic, breaking a sweat but not breathing hard, a lot of high stepping and other leg muscle use. My legs are definitely feeling it -- walking downstairs hurts.

If I call all of that hiking the equivalent of 150w JRA then I get a current TSB of -20. If I don't give it any TSS at all I'm at -4.

Today I did a short ride that I often do when pressed for time, a 100 ft/mile loop that I can finish in just under an hour if I hammer it out, doing the climbs at Z4 and the flats at Z3. It's very humid and I was suffering on the ride. Managed to do it in under an hour but had weird chills and just ridiculous amounts of sweat for a long time after I got home.

There are always a lot of moving parts to trying to conclude anything from how a particular day goes but I feel absolutely buried right now, much more like -20 than -4. I mean, maybe I'm getting sick or reacting badly to the weather or there's something else going on. Or maybe the recent non-cycling activity generated a lot of fatigue without contributing to fitness, which doesn't fit into the TSB model at all. All I really know is that I feel hammered flat right now.

TheKillerPenguin

I've discussed this with the coaches on my team and the zeitgeist seems to be that you can count it towards ATL but not towards CTL, which essentially makes it counter productive from a PMC perspective. My thought is that moving around must be better than not moving around, and doing something physical has to have at least some value for fitness even if it is minimal. So I am not really sure what the solution is as far as tracking that stuff goes. I tend towards doing what you do though and enter low TSS numbers for off-season hikes.

miyata man

If you really feel the need to justify the number for record keeping purposes. Why not just punch in whatever gets you to an approximation of how run down your body is right now? Not all fatigue is equal. For record keeping adjust X metric to fit you not a formula.

Some days the training status going on inside your head is more important than whatever physically destructive display of power has/will take(n) place. Today has been one of them. Body just beginning to gather all the little complaints from volunteering at NSGP last week into a well communicated bundle mirrors GC's malaise as well. The physical stuff goes away, doubts and poor choices stick around a little longer.

TheKillerPenguin

Maybe you could use hrTSS or something, but then you have to wear an HRM, which seems stupid if you're having fun doing rock scrambling and such.

Gramercy

Is there a link to learn more about the social ride?

Summer Friday's here so I'm probably going to do 2.5 hours or so after lunch before I pick up the kid from school.

tetonrider

i hear ya.

as you know, i'm a big fan of collecting high-quality data, but the question becomes what does one do with that data.

CTL was never meant to represent what is going on in someone's life, and it was never intended to mix activities. i've long been a fan of using other metrics as an attempt to objectively capture how the various off-the-bike things we do factor into our readiness to train and race on the bike.

Mowing the lawn, a stressful day at work, a strenuous hike, or an easy walk with the dog -- they all affect us in some way.

i think the trouble i have with bothering factoring all of this into the mix is that we're exceeding what CTL was meant to do.

yes, it's convenient to have a number, and there are lots of ways to create a value for TSS other than power (hrTSS, or just guessing), but in the end it is adding apples and oranges.

even the notion of adding TSS from, say, a sprint workout to an endurance workout gets kind of silly: you and I could both sit at 110 CTL and have gotten there with the same TSS every day, but depending on how we accumulated that TSS on any given day would dramatically change how we perform.

this brings me back to why i don't really worry about it: i don't really care about CTL at all. you have to know how each athlete (or how you) arrived at that CTL, which means the there is so much that is NOT in the numbers already.

at that point, might as well track "readiness to train" (subjective), or morning/resting HR, or HRV.

my attempts to quantify an overall 'life stress score' have been interesting, but in the end for an athlete who is in-tune with his/her body, i can't be certain it's better than a diary on how one feels each morning.

now, i do think the data is very important when you're working with it at a granular level and working toward improvements, but i feel like the PMC tends to be descriptive when people really want it to be predictive. that's where things get messy at best and useless at worst. it doesn't do such a great job at prediction.

your "i feel about like -20" is probably a better thing to add as a daily metric than anything else. if i were working with you, i'd want to know that as a coach.

aaronmcd

Idk if there is a link, you can Google butterlap. Its more of a meet people and hangout at 3 different stops with bikes in between.